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The American Prospect - articles by authorenGovernment Paves the Wayhttp://prospect.org/article/government-paves-way
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>The trends described in this special report paint a picture of an economy that was in trouble long before the current recession took hold -- at least from the standpoint of the American worker. Whether their distress is measured by stagnant wages or contingent jobs or violations of core labor laws, today's workers face a daunting labor market likely to provide them with fewer opportunities than their parents had.</p>
<p>Unless, of course, we do something about it. It took years to dismantle the good-jobs framework that this country tried (however imperfectly) to put together from the 1930s until the 1970s, and it will take years to build it back up. But someone needs to pave the way, and we nominate government for the job. </p>
<p>Business may have once engaged in a form of self-regulation during the heyday of managerial capitalism, but those days are long gone. Unions are struggling just to maintain their current share of the work force and cannot carry the burden alone. Community organizing has proved surprisingly robust (witness the living-wage movement and immigrant worker centers), but the larger promise of sustained civic engagement in things economic has yet to materialize. </p>
<p>What we need is more scale and power, and government has both. Government's levers on the private sector are plentiful -- but underused. Public money touches millions of private-sector jobs, whether by purchasing goods and services for the government or by funding the public goods that make our economy run -- everything from roads and bridges and the new green economy, to health care, education, and social services. Tens of millions more jobs are touched by employment and labor laws, and government's willingness to enforce them. </p>
<p>That means there's potentially an entire toolbox of policies that flow from government contracts and funding and from regulatory and enforcement authority that we should be activating. Though these tools have sat idle for the past eight years, we can revive them to restore an economy based on decent work. </p>
<p></p><center>***</center>
<p>A laborer paving an Atlanta highway, a home aide caring for a Detroit senior, and a cafeteria worker serving meals at a Tucson veterans' hospital share one thing in common: All three work in federally funded jobs that pay $10 an hour or less with limited benefits. They are examples of the millions of jobs across our economy financed by the roughly $1 trillion that the federal government spends each year on the combination of federal contracting and grant-in-aid programs to the states. </p>
<p>The federal government's vast and diverse economic footprint gives it a powerful tool for promoting a decent work agenda. Already, living-wage laws and community-benefits agreements in states and cities across the country have established the principle that employers that seek government funding should in return be asked to pay decent wages and benefits. If the Obama administration is to achieve its goal of rebuilding middle-class jobs, it should do the same at the federal level. Promoting good jobs not only helps working families, it provides one of the most sustained forms of economic stimulus, as workers spend their higher wages -- not just once but paycheck after paycheck. </p>
<p><b>Prevailing Wage Reforms.</b> A decent work agenda should start with modernizing the prevailing wage laws: the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act for construction, the 1936 Walsh-Healey Act for goods, and the 1965 Service Contract Act for services. On paper, all three laws require that federal contractors mirror the wages and benefits that are provided by the better-paying employers operating in their industry and labor market. However, the prevailing wage laws are currently falling well short of that goal. For example, Reagan-era regulations that watered down the wage-setting methodology under Davis-Bacon need to be reversed. Exemptions that exclude a range of service jobs from the Service Contract Act's coverage need to be repealed. And Walsh-Healey's prevailing wages for contractors that sell goods to the government -- not implemented since the 1960s -- should be resuscitated to promote good jobs in industries as diverse as the meatpacking plants that supply veterans' hospitals and the garment factories that produce U.S. military uniforms. </p>
<p><b>Responsible Contractor Requirements.</b> Prevailing wage laws alone can do little to promote good jobs in industries and regions that are overwhelmingly low-wage or that have little union presence. The federal government should therefore turn to a second set of tools: responsible contracting reforms and living-wage policies of the kind that states and cities have pioneered over the past decade. These policies employ rigorous screening to weed out violators of minimum wage, proper classification of regular workers, overtime, workers' compensation, and tax laws. They also have requirements or incentives for employers to provide decent wages, affordable health insurance, and other benefits like paid sick leave. States across the country have found that these reforms not only create better jobs but also attract a better pool of contractors, resulting in better highways and bridges and more reliable security and maintenance services. </p>
<p><b>Wage Standards in Federal Grants-in-Aid.</b> The policy framework for promoting good jobs through federal grant programs is far less developed than for federal contracting -- even though grant-in-aid programs under which federal funds flow to states and cities touch broad swaths of our economy. Prevailing wage requirements "flow down" to state and local construction jobs financed with federal funds. But there are no corresponding job standards for service jobs created at the state and local levels with federal dollars. As a result, many federal grant-in-aid programs and tax incentives are financing the creation of poverty-wage jobs across the nation. Women bear the brunt of this omission because they are disproportionately represented in the service sector. </p>
<p>One solution is to ensure that the Service Contract Act's prevailing wage and benefits standards are applied to state and local projects receiving federal funds. A good first candidate would be the proposed Rubbish to Renewables Act, which would create new federal subsidies to finance (among other things) modern recycling centers. Without standards, many recycling jobs are highly casualized, paying $9 or $10 per hour with no benefits. Service Contract Act standards would boost pay to $19.12 in Los Angeles and $14.96 in Houston, for example. </p>
<p><b>Federally Funded Human-Service Work.</b> By far the industries in which federal grant programs are creating the largest number of substandard jobs are health care and human services. Through Medicaid, for example, Washington finances much of the nation's home health-care services. Every day, more than a million home-care workers in the U.S. (the overwhelming majority of them women, immigrants, and people of color) provide the vital care that allows seniors and persons with disabilities to live in their own homes with dignity when they can no longer care for themselves. Home care is one of the nation's fastest-growing fields but also one of the lowest paying, trapping the workers in poverty and causing serious labor shortages and high turnover (which in turn undermines the quality of services). A similar story holds for day-care jobs subsidized by the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and school cafeteria positions financed by the National School Lunch Program. </p>
<p>Here, prevailing wage standards will not help because in these jobs virtually all employers pay poverty wages. Instead, the federal government needs to establish living-wage and benefits standards to upgrade these industries. Doing so will entail some cost -- but the cost of continuing to operate these programs on poverty wages is simply too high to ignore. </p>
<p><b>Reversing Outsourcing.</b> Finally, a decent work agenda should include re-evaluating the scale of federal outsourcing and bringing back "in house" many functions that today are performed by federal contractors (as the Obama administration has already begun to do). Not only is direct federal employment the most dependable source of good jobs, but experience suggests that many functions that were outsourced during the Bush years (when federal contracting doubled in scale) can more accountably and efficiently be performed by federal employees. </p>
<p></p><center>***</center>
<p>Of all the policies needed to rebuild an economy based on decent work, none is more straightforward than having government simply enforce the laws that are on the books. Last October, a federal judge in New York ordered the Saigon Grill restaurant chain to pay an astonishing $4.6 million to its delivery workers, revealing a grim set of business practices that had gone unchecked for years. The delivery men earned as little as $1.60 an hour, for working up to 13 hours a day, six or seven days a week. Illegal deductions were taken from their pay, in the form of fines and kickbacks. When they tried to organize, they were summarily fired. </p>
<p>The scale of the wage theft in this case is astonishing -- some workers were owed as much as $328,000 -- but the practice itself is not an outlier. As the other articles in this special report have described, growing numbers of workers are not being paid the minimum wage or overtime, health and safety violations are on the rise in industries like residential construction, and employers are misclassifying their employees as independent contractors or outsourcing work to unscrupulous contractors. </p>
<p><b>More Funding for Investigators. </b>Reactivating these agencies will require that we restore funding levels to increase the number of investigators on the ground. By our calculations, between 1980 and 2007, the number of inspectors enforcing federal minimum-wage and overtime laws declined by 31 percent and the number of enforcement actions fell by 61 percent. By contrast, the labor force grew by 52 percent during this same time period. Similarly, the AFL-CIO reports that the budget of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been cut by $25 million since 2001; at its current staffing and inspection levels, it would take the agency 133 years to inspect each workplace under its jurisdiction just once. </p>
<p><b>Robust Enforcement of Workplace Laws.</b> But numbers alone aren't enough; <i>how</i> agencies enforce the law needs a complete overhaul as well. A good illustration here is the Labor Department, which can become much more aggressive in enforcing minimum-wage and overtime laws, simply by changing the way it implements existing laws. </p>
<p>First, the Labor Department should move toward proactive, "investigation driven" enforcement in low-wage industries, rather than waiting for complaints to come in. This means taking the initiative, identifying industries where violations are systemic, conducting strategic and repeated workplace audits, and cracking down on employers who misclassify their workers. Employers must be held responsible for their workers -- especially in cases where subcontracting is being used as an evasion strategy. The goal is to send industry-wide signals that the government will pursue violations and that there is a tangible likelihood of inspection. </p>
<p>Second, the department needs to increase its reach and effectiveness by partnering with immigrant worker centers, unions, service providers, and community groups, as well as responsible employers that understand the need to ensure full compliance in their industry. Government alone will never have enough resources to monitor every workplace in the country; partnerships can provide the vital "ears on the ground" to identify where workplace violations are most concentrated. </p>
<p>Third, the Labor Department needs to better protect workers who file complaints, especially those who are vulnerable because of their immigration status. This will mean re-establishing a strong firewall between workplace and immigration inspections, so that information gathered during a wage-and-hour case, for example, is kept confidential and not shared with immigration authorities. Otherwise, undocumented workers will be driven further underground, too scared to come forward and assert their right to basic workplace protections like the minimum wage. And when workers aren't able to complain (regardless of whether they're born in the U.S. or abroad), labor standards suffer. </p>
<p><b>Leveraging Regulatory Powers.</b> The Labor Department can also strengthen workplace standards by issuing or clarifying regulations pursuant to authority that Congress has already given it. For example, the nation's home-care workers not only receive poverty wages but are excluded from even basic minimum wage and overtime protections under an outdated exemption. The Labor Department can end this improper and unfair exclusion by reissuing a regulation that was proposed by the Clinton administration (but withdrawn by the Bush administration) clarifying that most home-care workers are indeed covered. </p>
<p>By implementing these and other strategies to fully harness the power of federal regulatory agencies (the Department of Labor, OSHA, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), the Obama administration can make giant strides in re-establishing decent work as the baseline standard in our labor market. On the spectrum of strategies to regularize work, this really is low-hanging fruit. </p>
<p><b>Stronger Laws.</b> Simply doing a better job at enforcement, however, won't be enough; the laws have to be strengthened as well. Weak standards in employment and labor law send the wrong signal, inviting low-road business strategies to cut labor costs. When the bar is set too low, the incentive is to ratchet down to it. Raising the minimum wage, updating health and safety standards, expanding overtime coverage, and strengthening the right of workers to organize -- all are key improvements that will raise standards in the workplace and improve the competitive position of employers who play by the rules. </p>
<p></p><center>***</center>
<p>Even during the current recession, many employers are showing that it is possible to compete using a business model based on providing stable employment and decent wages. Government policies need to reinforce their good behavior, not undermine it. In cities and states across the country, innovative policies are being developed every day to harness public resources to create and sustain good jobs. And in low-wage service industries, unions and community groups are organizing workers and winning important policy changes (showing that there is nothing inherently contingent or low-wage about these jobs). </p>
<p>It is time to lift these lessons to the federal policy arena and for the administration to lead with a strong and resounding vision for decent work -- and then to put it into action. This is not just feel-good public policy (though many workers will feel better as a result of it). It's about the concrete costs of workers being misclassified as independent contractors, robbing federal and state governments of billions of dollars in tax revenues. It's about the very real pressure that responsible employers feel when unscrupulous employers break the law and set off a race to the bottom. And it's about how to use public dollars wisely and efficiently to create the jobs our communities need. The tools stand ready: job-quality standards on government contracts and program funding as well as robust labor laws that are fully enforced. All that remains is to use them. </p>
</div></div></div>Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:51:01 +0000148229 at http://prospect.orgPaul SonnThe Fight for the Minimum Wagehttp://prospect.org/article/fight-minimum-wage
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p>Last November, voters across the country overwhelmingly approved ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage. Now, however, legislatures in several states are trying to gut these new wage laws and deny long overdue raises to low-income families. Industries that employ low-wage workers are fighting against annual cost-of-living increases, long overdue raises for tipped restaurant workers, and applying minimum wage laws to home care workers and seasonal farmworkers. Whether these efforts succeed will test our national commitment to American workers and their right to fair wages.</p>
<p>For ten years the Republican Congress froze the federal minimum wage at just $5.15 an hour, driving its value in real terms down to the lowest point in 50 years. Even worse, the eroded minimum wage is dragging down pay for everyone at the bottom end of our economy. As a result, 44 million working Americans -- everyone from security guards and Wal-Mart clerks to home health aides and restaurant servers -- today earn less than $10 an hour. </p>
<p>National momentum for restoring the minimum wage has been building for some time, mostly in the states. This movement culminated last fall when voters in six states passed ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage and, just as important, automatically increase it each year in the future to keep up with the cost-of-living. (Full disclosure: the Brennan Center for Justice assisted these campaigns and is helping fight the roll-back efforts.) </p>
<p>Last month, the new Democratic Congress was finally able to force through a federal minimum wage increase by attaching it to the Iraq war funding bill. But while long overdue, the approved increase was very modest -- lower even than the current minimum wages in many of the states. Even after it takes effect in July, it will still take a minimum wage worker a full day to earn enough to buy a tank of gas. </p>
<p>The reason it was so small is that minimum wage supporters still do not have the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate, which a stronger bill would face. So at least until 2009, the real fight to restore the minimum wage will continue to be in the states. And what happens there will set the stage for further national reform. </p>
<p>Lobbyists for low-wage employers know this. Last year industry groups like the National Restaurant Association and the National Federation of Independent Businesses and restaurant mega-corporations like McDonald's and OSI Restaurant Partners (Outback Steakhouse) bankrolled unsuccessful efforts to defeat the minimum wage ballot initiatives. Now these industries are using their clout with legislators in states like Ohio, Missouri, and Montana, where voters approved wage hikes last fall, to try to roll back the increases. Their back-room machinations in these states are brazen attempts to go behind voters' backs and reverse the wage increases they overwhelmingly approved. </p>
<p>In Ohio, for example, the votes had barely been counted when low-wage employers launched a roll-back campaign under the guise of "implementing" the new wage hike. They hurried through a lame-duck session of the legislature a bill that attempted to reverse many of the new protections contained in the minimum wage law that the voters had approved. Grassroots activists mobilized to fight back. Unfortunately, they lost the first round when the deeply partisan legislature approved this unconstitutional roll-back just days before Governor-elect Ted Strickland -- who surely would have vetoed it -- took office. </p>
<p>Governor Strickland was then faced with attempting to reconcile the strong voter-approved minimum wage with the legislature's effort to gut it. This included a portion of the legislature's bill that some interpreted as rolling back the minimum wage hike for seasonal farmworkers and home health aides -- workers who shamefully are still excluded from our federal minimum wage. In a major victory, the Strickland administration discovered that, as drafted, the legislature's bill could be interpreted as not cutting these deserving workers out of the minimum wage after all. As a result, tens of thousands of health aides and agricultural workers are now receiving the legally mandated raise. </p>
<p>In Montana, the attack was by the restaurant industry, which is focused on rolling back the minimum wage for tipped food-service workers -- one of the state's largest low-wage sectors. The industry proposed legislation making "modest adjustments" in the minimum wage rules for restaurant workers who collect tips. But this Trojan horse would in reality slash pay by more than $4 an hour for nearly 9,000 waiters and waitresses statewide and block them from getting the future minimum wage increases that the voters approved. Advocates worked to expose this roll-back and appealed to the legislature to respect the will of the 74 percent of Montana voters who endorsed the wage increase. Fortunately, the bill died in committee when the legislative session ended in April. But advocates and Governor Brian Schweitzer will need to be vigilant next year in case it returns. </p>
<p>In Missouri, where 76 percent of voters approved the minimum wage increase, the attack has been the most brazen. Like in Montana, the restaurant industry is trying to reverse the minimum wage increase for tipped workers. They began by persuading Governor Matt Blunt's labor department to reinterpret the law to allow restaurant servers to be forced to work just for tips and be paid no hourly wages at all. Fortunately, after a public outcry and the release of an analysis that exposed the new interpretation as illegal, Governor Blunt abandoned the effort, and fired the staffer behind it. </p>
<p>But the industry tried again, this time introducing a bill in the legislature that would roll back wages for tipped workers, and filing a lawsuit asking the courts to impose the wage cut unilaterally. (A judge dismissed the suit last month.) Even more shocking, business lobbyists introduced another bill to repeal annual cost-of-living increases in the minimum wage -- the single most important reform that the voters approved in November. Grassroots groups responded by launching a statewide campaign to organize low-wage workers across the state to protest. The coming months will determine how this fight plays out. The legislature's Republican majority is holding hostage minor technical fixes to the minimum wage law until the governor and others agree to these major roll-backs in the voter-approved minimum wage. </p>
<p>The fact that elected leaders would even consider reversing or undermining wage hikes that voters approved by margins as high as 76 percent is surprising and troubling. But the impact of campaign money from low-wage employers can't be underestimated. The emerging lesson of these fights is that if progressives organize and expose these attacks for what they are -- attempts to cut pay for struggling workers and families -- the public responds, and lawmakers pushing the roll-backs start getting nervous. But doing so requires on-the-ground organizing combined with analysis to expose the true impact of what are often presented as "technical" rule changes. </p>
<p>These fights in the states are especially important because they are paving the way for long overdue federal reform. That's because the changes that we're now fighting for in Missouri, Montana, and Ohio -- annual cost-of-living increases for the minimum wage, raises for tipped restaurant workers, and ending outmoded exclusions for home care workers and seasonal farmworkers -- are some of the key reforms in our national wage protections that Congress will need to tackle after 2008. Whether the grassroots campaigns to resist these state cuts succeed will be an important test of our national commitment to finishing the job of rebuilding a strong minimum wage for all Americans.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 01 Jun 2007 23:34:56 +0000146342 at http://prospect.orgPaul Sonn